Mijnheer de Rector Magnificus, Mevrouw de Decaan, Zeer Gewaardeerde Toehoorders, Dutch data on graying audiences 'Public interest in art is declining and the young are defecting en masse.' Actually, the story is quite the opposite. more...

What do we mean when we call a work of art `beautiful`? How do perceptions of beauty change with the passage of time? Elizabeth Prettejohn explores these crucial questions, showing the vital relationship between our changing notions of beauty and specific works of art. She charts the story of western art, from eighteenth-century Germany to the late... more...

What is 'contemporary' about contemporary art? Who is really running the art world?This controversial and witty exploration of the dramatic changes that have taken place in the art world since the fall of the Berlin Wall provides a critical look at the reasons for the current art boom, and reveals the politics behind the business. more...

This book takes Beauty as already existing and enjoyed, and seeks to analyze and account for Beauty's existence and enjoyment. More strictly speaking, it analyzes and accounts for Beauty not inasmuch as existing in certain objects and processes, but rather as calling forth (and being called forth by) a particular group of mental activities and... more...

The A to Z of Renaissance Art covers the years 1250 to 1648, the period most disciplines place as the Renaissance Era. A complete portrait of this remarkable period is depicted in this book through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and over 500 hundred cross-referenced dictionary entries on major Renaissance painters, sculptors,... more...

In this impressive collection honouring the German scholar of Islamic art Jens Kröger on his 65th birthday, Avinoam Shalem and Annette Hagedorn bring together twenty-five contributions from a highly distinguished group of experts on Islamic art and specialists of central and south Asian art. Unpublished artefacts and new interpretations are presented... more...

In this concise and pithy study, art critic David Levi Strauss makes an argument for the continued relevance of art made by hand. A wide variety of media and individual examples are considered: the works of individual sculptors and painters; "exotic" practitioners, such as the West coast Haida and the poet Cecilia Vicuna; curatorial figures and critical... more...